You know you're a permie when...

Orb spiders are cool. Orb webs are awesome. Orb spiders are not allowed to build those webs in the house. Scooped it up, took it outside to a bush, told it "Build a web here. Good spider! Build HERE."
You know you are a permie when...  you don't stomp spiders, you train them :D

When you keep ripping holes and repairing them on the same pair of pants, not just because you're saving money but because you just like that pair of pants so much

When your happy of weeds like goose grass for more compost material.

When you come in with mud on shoes and smile.

When walking barefoot at dusk, you pick up on things, like this:
-leaf litter feels warmer (maybe, b/c it's dry)
-wood mulch is a little less warm (not sure why...)
-concrete is a little cooler
-grass is slightly more cold (perhaps it's losing heat like sweat)

It's Saturday night & it's nothing special. Tired & hungry with a big list of more tasks for tomorrow & next week. Just another night.

Mike Barkley wrote:It's Saturday night & it's nothing special. Tired & hungry with a big list of more tasks for tomorrow & next week. Just another night.

Today's Saturday? You sure?
Mmmkay. Have to say I guess I agree it ain't special, I thought today was Friday. :D

Mike Barkley wrote:It's Saturday night & it's nothing special. Tired & hungry with a big list of more tasks for tomorrow & next week. Just another night.

:) or raining, one could also work on those house tasks.

You might be a permie if you have to keep building more annual garden beds, because your other ones have turned perenial/self-seeding.

(One of my garden beds is now full of sorrel, walking onions, self-seeding kale, and self-seeding radishes. Another is now chives, strawberries and kale)

You might be a permie if you're idea of a good time is making more garden beds and growing areas, and you're whole family joins in on the fun.

Dave Burton wrote:When you're trying to figure out why your back hurts, and you don't head to the doctor straight away for a solution but instead look at what you're doing in your life that might be causing said backpain, by altering one or two things at a time to find the causes (for me, it was my shoes, so I've gone minimal shoes, and my backpack, so I just carry a bag in my hands, while considering learning the art of furoshiki).

Furoshiki is super useful. I recommend ふろしきBOOK (ISBN: 978-277-43123-1). It is entirely in Japanese, but it is fully illustrated with each step and reading it is wholly unnecesary.

When your 2-year old daughter sees flowers and thinks of them as food, and asks to eat them all.

When your kids are sick and don't want to eat anything, but when you take them outside, they scarf down on chives, borage flowers, nasturtium flowers, sorrel, black berries, strawberries, radish flowers and kale flowers!

When you want to know that you have lived. (That's kind of how I see the objective of taking responsibility for my own existence: making those connections, feeling them, and everything else responsibility entails is what makes life have meaning and makes it feel like I have lived)

When you find a new weed in the garden and instead of pulling it, you run inside to Google it to see if it's edible.

When you realize that you've forgotten what it means to throw away food -- leftovers are the next meal or the dog's supper or the chickens and ducks supplemental feed, etc. Nothing in any way edible goes to waste -- ever. (I cringe every time I see someone in a movie scrapping perfectly good food off a plate directly into a wastebasket or order something in a restaurant and then get up and leave without tasting it. I'm like, NO, you can't do that!!!)

You know you're a permie when it's past midnight, but you can't go to sleep because SEED CATALOGS.

Nicole Alderman wrote:You know you're a permie when it's past midnight, but you can't go to sleep because SEED CATALOGS.

Or if it's 10 AM and you have gotten no work done yet in the day because someone posted something on Permies that sent you to the Baker Creek catalog, and OH MY!! I marked all kinds of things I want!!

You know you're a permie when:

-you're over at family's house for the holidays, and instead of buying a gym membership to do your workouts at for just a couple days, you use a local playground and a couple trees to do your workout. I used the trees as a pullup bar and something to hold my feet up high, while doing an decline progression to handstand pushups (i.e. legs above me but not yet at 180 degrees but greater than 90 degrees).

-you can tell the quality of the soil in a landscape by walking barefoot across the land; I can really tell the difference in land quality between the "Nature is my personal bitch" kind of suburban landscape back in Houston, TX versus the higher quality and healthier landscape back in Missoula, MT. It's no wonder people don't like walking on the ground in the suburbs, because the ground is hard, compacted, and barely alive from all the manicuring they do it. Whereas, the land in Missoula is so much softer to walk on.

:lol: I guess you can tell you’re a newbie permie when you don’t have to exercise because of chicken coop... cow shed... fencing... tool shed... ... ... ....... .. .

... you no longer see it as giant piles of leaves that took weeks to gather. You now see it as next year's watermelon patch.

... you learn about tiny bamboo sporks.

... your first rooster does it's first crowing attempts. After a short happy dance because one is a confirmed rooster you try to teach it to crow properly. Like the king that he is. "Er. Er?"  No rooster it's "ER! ER ER ER!!" Best fun all day.

You know your a permie when you are asked by family what you want to do to celebrate a big achievement and your response is to take a day off from work to build a pond.

Mike Barkley wrote:... you learn about tiny bamboo sporks.

There's also tiny metal sporks. But they're rather pointy and the bowl of the spoon is really deep. The spoon is useless for eating yogurt (which is what we usually use our sporks for), but probably great for soup. The spoon part is also really big--my kids can't eat out of it. I still like my bamboo sporks the best. I need to get a few more so there's enough for everyone to eat with! That way we don't have to use plastic silverware the few time we pick up food from the deli/grocery store and eat on the run.

There's anothertiny spork I found, but it doesn't have the convenience of a spoon on one side and a fork on the other. Instead, it's tactical on the other side. I never got it, so I can't say how it works out.

Mike Barkley wrote:... you learn about tiny bamboo sporks.

You know you're a permie when you read "tiny spork" but think "tiny spoon, fork or knife" INSIDE a persimmon seed. It is important to correctly identify which seedling utensil it is or you won't be able to predict the weather for the coming winter!!!

Mike Barkley wrote:... you no longer see it as giant piles of leaves that took weeks to gather. You now see it as next year's watermelon patch.

For us it's a chicken playground before they turn it into spring garden mulch. Fun to watch!

You know your a permie when after a wind storm that knocks down a lot of branches you drag the larger ones off the road to your property to add around your plants. Yup I did this - in the rain - today after the power had been out for 15 hours

When you have a power outage for about 20 hours, LOVE it, are totally prepared for it, and when the power comes on, the first thing you do is see how permies is doing

Nicole Alderman wrote:[ I need to get a few more so there's enough for everyone to eat with! That way we don't have to use plastic silverware the few time we pick up food from the deli/grocery store and eat on the run.
.

Charity shop cutlery kept in the car is my solution to that, If i'm out I will have the car with me so I am never short a fork or knife!

Skandi Rogers wrote:

Nicole Alderman wrote:[ I need to get a few more so there's enough for everyone to eat with! That way we don't have to use plastic silverware the few time we pick up food from the deli/grocery store and eat on the run.
.

Charity shop cutlery kept in the car is my solution to that, If i'm out I will have the car with me so I am never short a fork or knife!

Yeah, I agree, I just keep spoons in my purse and truck, and I always have a knife, anything else I can eat with fingers. Never cared for sporks, they seem ineffective both ways. Spoons are cheap.
But, I also don't have kids. When it's just me I can lick my spoon and throw it back in my purse :)

When your kids fight over a toy...so you make them a new one using the tutorials in the PEP program! They totally stopped fighting over their hammer to learn how I made mine, and then spent a bunch of time trying to drill into wood like I did.

Fighting ended? CHECK!
New skill learned? CHECK!
New toy/tool acquired? CHECK!
Kids learning woodworking skills? CHECK!

When your kids watch you drill holes to make a mallet, and then want to use drill bits. And, despite it being messy and "dangerous," you totally let them drill into scrap wood, excited that they're learning about wood working.


When you find an old copiced maple tree and are exited to try cut down a trunk to make into a stool....but then your kids want it as a tree fort, so you let them have, and even climb up, too!

When you go to a charity auction (and chili cookoff!) and they are selling all kinds of neat stuff, and you get all excited when you are the winning bid for 15 tons of gravel, delivered! YAY!!

When your kids have hypotheses on Paul Wheaton's middle name. Since my daughter can't say "Wheaton" yet, she calls him "Paul Wee." And, so, my son thinks Paul's middle name is "Wee."

Paul Wheaton, you are hereby dubbed "Paul Weee Wheaton."

.......you stop thinking your problem is bindweed and realise your problem is a lack of chickens.

... your breakfast is so fresh it's still warm from the chicken.

When you visit friends who have traveled here from out of state, and they offer you their food scraps for your compost, and you gleefully accept.

Nicole Alderman wrote:When your kids have hypotheses on Paul Wheaton's middle name. Since my daughter can't say "Wheaton" yet, she calls him "Paul Wee." And, so, my son thinks Paul's middle name is "Wee."

Paul Wheaton, you are hereby dubbed "Paul Weee Wheaton."

This is extra funny considering Paul's giant stature.

When you notice that the flock of tadpoles in your pond come from under and hurl into a cloud of daphnia gathered in the sun at the watersurface to feed on the daphnia and dive back down under, only to come back up into the cloud again. You realize this is just what orca and dolphins do with a shoal of herrings. Google has not heard of this tadpole behavior.
You realize pioneering comes from observing and doing, so start to feed the tadpoles small snails, which they refuse, but notice them ripping the carcass to bits like a flock of wolves, when it's rotting, so you decide to snip the tiny snails in tinier bits and notice the tadpoles  "fight" over them when the soft bits are out, all in the hopes to make them get a real taste for snails so they will grow up to be an army of free ranging snail destroyers to save my lettuces.
I'm setting up this company Hugo's Snail Destroyers to sell y'all my frogs, but still haven't figured out a way to make the paint of my logo stick on the frog's back.

ps tried tattooing already, but they just won't keep still.

Hugo Morvan wrote:
I'm setting up this company Hugo's Snail Destroyers to sell y'all my frogs, but still haven't figured out a way to make the paint of my logo stick on the frog's back.

ps tried tattooing already, but they just won't keep still.

Fabric paint!! :D  Use a primer though...
How about tie dye?!

Excellent observation about tadpoles! And teaching them tricks! I LOVE it!! :D
Actually, you don't need give them a logo, teach them to say it! Huuu--Go. Hugo hugo huuuu goooo... they can sing your praises!! :)

You made me laugh! Thank you! :D

Your non-permie friends glaze over after foolishly asking you 'how's the garden going this year'

Amanda Launchbury-Rainey wrote:.......you stop thinking your problem is bindweed and realise your problem is a lack of chickens.

haha...that's exactly how I've been looking at our abundant bermuda grass lately...first a racoon proof chicken house then about two dozen of the birds

When you find this and are really excited because it may be just on your new land.

You know you're a permie when you finish up with some paying work and decide to take a quick break before starting on the next thing, and that quick break entails checking out the "You know you're a permie when" thread

You know you're a permie when:

...you have two calendars on your wall, one for tracking planting times and fertility dates for the critters, the other huge at-a-glance calendar for keeping track of daily duck and chicken eggs, sitting and hatch dates, RMH wood use, seed planting and sprout dates, harvest dates and notes, roadside stand sales... all the important stuff, even the once-a-month trip to town!

...you save your pasta water to pour on your "indoor" sunroom garden because you know all that starch will kick-start the soil microbes to help warm that chilly winter soil

...you use the offal from duck and chicken harvests to build nutrient-dense squash and tomato hills that after a few more years will be replaced with fruit trees

...you spend 8 hours straight working out the finer details for a goat paddock shift system that you probably wont be able to afford for another two years (even though the pioneer growth you're trying to combat is perfect for them NOW)

...the answer in your head to every question, and I mean EVERY question, starts with "It depends", but you try to never say that part out loud because it really irks people

...your solution to the so-called "climate change" situation is plant diversity and ruminants...and that includes both cows that fart and those so-called "invasives" - oh the horror!


and finally, you know you're a permie when you can't help but laugh out loud at the image in your head of Paul's eyebrows when he reads that he's been officially named "Paul Wee Wheaton".

Paul the Wee, perhaps?


Anyone know if Hugo's snail destroyers will settle for slugs? If so, I'm willing to put down a deposit for my spring order!